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Comment by Symmetry | Hacker News Reader

It's too bad we couldn't arrange it so that one vaccine could be the "Trump vaccine" that Republicans could get and another could be the "Fauci vaccine" for Democrats. Then people could express their political affiliations in their medical choices but still get vaccinated. There were a lot of Democratic politicians talking about not trusting rushed vaccines a year ago and if that could have focused on specific vaccines and kept going maybe we'd be in a better place today with regards to vaccinations.

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My partner is ex-Christian Scientist (a faith-healing cult that doesn't believe in disease or medicine.) Zir whole family finally relented and got vaccinated, but they all got J+J. I don't know why that vaccine in particular (maybe because it's single-shot, so they only have to deal with hypocrisy once?) but that vaccine is popular with that cohort.

Just out of curiosity- they used to be a christian scientist and now they’re not and go by xe/zir style pronouns? That’s quite a journey if so.

As for J&J, yes it’s generally the fact that it’s one and done so it feels less risky to people that didn’t want to get vaccinated. Then there’s the whole mRNA thing as well.

It could just be GP's preferred way of anonymizing their SO without having to resort to the dreaded singular specific "they". Call it light-weight anonymization to make it more difficult to be casually doxxed.

Zie grew up in CS, but was queer, and CS (at least back then) was very anti-LGBT. Principia, the CS university, would expel openly gay students and fire openly gay professors, and zir parents were homophobic too. The mom would listen to testimonials of people's "healings" of their same-sex attraction.

That made zir not fit in, and accelerated zir dropping out of CS and discovering the LGBT community, and non-binary identity.

Thanks for that context. I learned a bit about something new :)

I wanted JJ because not mRNA and is accepted in several countries.

The JJ mechanism of action is better understood and less risky, in my view at least it is more acceptable for emergency approval.

Most of the vaccine hesitancy started as made up Facebook posts. Make a video, draw a contrast between the vaccines and next thing you know millions might be repeating whatever you made up. It might actually have some benefit, but furthers harmful patterns. I know people who have expressed interest in new nasal vaccines which may or may not come, I think they know they need a vaccine, but are just looking for some way to get one without admiting they've been wrong all this time.

The vaccine hesitancy started out with the entire media, Biden and Fauci saying an effective vaccine will be years away. Meanwhile Trump is out hawking the warpspeed vaccine like it will save the world. A week after the election and the narrative flips.

I don't buy the first model year of a car, very rarely take an on patent drug, and I won't inject myself with a medical device before the long term studies have been completed.

What are these long term studies you speak of?

I'm not aware of any currently, but that doesn't mean someone isn't doing one. At the very least, there is likely several cohort studies going on right now that will capture some useful data.

There is no substitute for time. Very few people have had the vaccine for more that 1 year. None have had it more than 5.

Interesting, so if you were to define quantifiable criteria for when/what would make you feel safe, what would that be?

Not trolling here, I'm genuinely interested and thank you for sharing.

I would need to know - Short-term risks of taking vaccine - Long-term risks of taking vaccine - Short-term benefits of taking vaccine - Long-term benefits of taking vaccine - Risks and benefits of alternatives

The vaccine doesn't even need to be "safe" for it to be worthwhile. A person with a short enough expected lifespan (elderly or comorbid) may derive a great benefit from a drug with real long-term risks.

For long term risks, nothing can substitute for time. I'm relatively young. I have an expected lifespan of 40+ more years. Ideally, I would want 40+ years worth of long term data. Realistically, I will settle for 5 years of good data. That should give good enough information to make an informed decision.

The biggest hurdle to overcome is censorship. A large portion of the media and big tech is censoring "misinformation". Its not just social media like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. nor main stream media like CNN, Fox, MSNBC, etc. Companies like Google are removing advertisement from pages if it says something they disagree with. With this heavy handed skew, can you really trust the information that comes out?

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